The Connoisseurs

The Orange Box

I’ve always been a fan of putting my money where my mouth is. Figuratively of course, if I did so literally that would be extremely unhygienic. But what I mean is that for a long time I’ve been talking about how much I love the ideas of digital distribution and episodic game content, and in that sense I’ve made an effort to throw some dollars at the people involved in these developing markets. For example whenever I’m going to buy a game I usually use steam so I don’t have to deal with annoying game store politics and fragile hard copies. Likewise I’m a patron of GameTap which provides hundreds of critical favorites for a low monthly price. I’ve even invested into most episodic games, purchasing Half-Life episode one, Sin Episode one and downloading Sam and Max Season One.

Sam and Max proved to be the exact thing advertised while Sin died long before a second episode could find distribution. And Half-Life? Well this is what the orange box is all about. Half-Life episodes were supposed to be delivered to us every few months in installments that elaborate upon the legend of Gordon Freeman and his dystopian world. Instead of course the second installment was delayed for more than a year, creating the need for some sort of consolation prize. You see no matter how earth shatteringly awesome episode two turned out to be, it would still be met with great disappointment given how long it spent in development. Well Episode Two was re-packaged as part of the Orange Box and this release format has in fact shielded Episode Two from critical and fan outrage.

The idea is that you get Half-Life 2, it’s first and second episodes, Team Fortress 2 and Portals for one comparably low price. Portals and Team fortress two have resulted to be immensely popular fan favorites and Episode Two delivered pretty much what everyone expected. It seems apt to start with Episode Two of course.

The game kicks off with a quick montage of scenes from Episode Two, I suppose refresh the players who haven’t touched the franchise since Episode One ended more than a year ago. After some disturbing revelations Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance set off on a quest to deliver vital information to their allies. The road is bumpy and full of fun puzzles and tenacious enemies. In fact the new enemies are extremely resilient, with acid spitting ant lions and biomechanical hunters enduring much more punishment than their fragile frames would suggest. Still the way they interact with their environments suggest great A.I. and make for fun cinematic experience. Strictly speaking nothing much has changed, but Valve continues to do amazing things with pacing and storytelling. Frankly I wouldn’t mind playing through a few more of these episodes so long as I don’t have to wait a year for each one. Sadly I hear that the next installment is the last but we shall see what happens.

Next up is Portal, a vibrantly creative puzzler poured into the frame of a first person shooter. You are cast as a nameless female guinea pig that has no choice but to participate in a series of spatial experiments devised by a mischievous artificial intelligence. As you advance through levels you learn new ways to harness the awesome power of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, a gun that punches holes in space.

This concept is a little hard to explain on paper so I’ll use an example. Say for example you need to navigate your character through a corridor but there is a huge pit in the way. Using your portal gun you can make an entrance in the wall next to you and an exit on the other side of the pit. As the game advances you must come up with increasingly complex solutions to the problems you face, doing crazy stuff with the laws of physics and bending space. All through your journey you are companied by the disembodied voice of GLaDOS, the artificial intelligence that has staged this series of experiments. As a narrator GLaDOS is one of the games highlights, as its clumsy attempts to comfort the player are equally hilarious and menacing. The game is quite short and shouldn’t require more than a few hours to finish. According to Steam I took only 1.7 hours to complete the game but I had to rush a lot since I was sneaking in playing sessions while an out of town visitor napped. Still the play mechanic is mind altering and I cannot think of anyone who won’t feel rewarded by the games charming ending.

As far as sheer playability goes the big star of the show is Team Fortress Two, a long awaited sequel to the multiplayer classic. By combining simplified game play with stylized graphics they have created an instantly accessible online fragfest. Simply put the snipers look like snipers, the pyros look like pyros and the spy looks like whoever he wants. All levels have been carefully designed to make for pretty even matches with tons of strategy options.

These strategy options include great spots for engineers to place sentry guns and convenient shortcuts that a skilled scout can take. Also infinitely important are the back doors that make for easy infiltration, since it’s pretty obvious that somebody running the wrong direction is probably a spy. With nine distinct yet useful classes it’s hard to get sick of the game, regardless if your style involves switching back and forth or sticking to what you know best. If you would like to star in a counterstrike adaptation directed by Tex Avery, this is absolutely the game for you.